The At-Home Waxing Kit I Can Actually Use Myself

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There are several steps to waxing your own bikini line:

1) Build up enough fear of pain, spending money, and not being in control of your own body that the thought of going to a professional is out of the question.

2) Heat the wax in the microwave. If it's too cold it won't work, and if it's too hot you'll burn your most sensitive region, NO BIGGIE!

3) Lay out a towel.

4) Pour a glass of wine or three.

5) Yank.

I have honed these steps over the past several years thanks in large part to the Sally Hansen Lavender Spa Wax Kit. I've tried other drugstore versions, and this is the one I keep returning to — it smells great, it lifts the hair off relatively cleanly, and it's inexpensive. (Even more so if you supplement with wax sticks and strips from Amazon once the included ones have run out; no matter how hairy you are, there will still be plenty of wax left when you've used up the accoutrements.)

The kit is by no means perfect — it takes a couple of tries to get each patch completely smooth, and you should know, since we are now so intimately acquainted, that I pretty much only tend to the more... surface-level bits, and can't vouch for what would happen if you tried to venture further inward.

Plenty of people, including a coworker and some very cross Amazon reviewers, appear to downright hate the kit. But it's never done me wrong, and like all things I choose to do alone for cheap in my apartment (such as making chicken tenders from scratch), the convenience trumps any messiness or sub-par results.